Injecting Anti-Racism Activism Into the Adoption Process Won’t Help Black Children

Quillette ^ | October 23, 2021 | David K. Ryden

[karpov]

A headline on Newsweek’s web site grabbed my attention in early May: “Wokeness Has Come for Adoption. It’s the Children Who Will Suffer.” This is a subject I know well: My wife and I have fostered three child refugees—from Zimbabwe, Guatemala, and Honduras respectively. These foster children are functionally adopted, and have become full-fledged members of our family.

The article noted that a vice-president at Bethany Christian Services, the largest Christian adoption agency in the country, had told a reporter that allowing white families to adopt black children from the foster care system “can cause a lot of harm to children of color”; consequently, Bethany now favors “overhauling” the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, the US statute prohibiting child-welfare agencies that receive federal funding from denying foster or adoptive placements on the basis of race. Bethany proclaimed that it would be embarking on a “long journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization”—a journey that would require Bethany to consider race “as part of the best-interest determination for child placement.”

Bethany Christian Services is headquartered in western Michigan, where I happen to live. Indeed, our own family has worked with Bethany’s refugee program since 2011, and I know numerous other families that have teamed with Bethany in effectuating transracial adoptions. (I should also note that Bethany’s Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs is Nate Bult, a former student and research assistant of mine.)

The Newsweek author, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Naomi Schaefer Riley, focused substantially on a 2021 Bethany report titled, What the Pandemic Taught Us: Innovative Practice Report. “As the Bethany report points out, Black children are removed from their homes at a higher rate than white children,” Riley writes.

[Steely Tom]

Executive Summary: to fight racism we must prohibit white parents from adopting black children.

[Rummyfan]

Black children are removed from their homes at a higher rate than white children,” Riley writes.

I don't suppose the author took the time to research why that is... like an absent father, and a fourteen year old mother who is a crack addict? Who already has another child too.

[SunkenCiv]

[snip] The article noted that a vice-president at Bethany Christian Services, the largest Christian adoption agency in the country, had told a reporter that allowing white families to adopt black children from the foster care system “can cause a lot of harm to children of color”; consequently, Bethany now favors “overhauling” the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, the US statute prohibiting child-welfare agencies that receive federal funding from denying foster or adoptive placements on the basis of race. Bethany proclaimed that it would be embarking on a “long journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization”—a journey that would require Bethany to consider race “as part of the best-interest determination for child placement.” [/snip]

[KarlInOhio]

The US adoption process is already hard enough that many people adopt overseas children, even if they are teenagers by the time they finally get off their container ship in Long Beach.

[sima_yi]

...“long journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization”—a journey that would require Bethany to consider race...

Translation: "In order to become anti-racist, we have to become racist."

[bk1000]

I heard something like this many years ago. A white family was refused adoption of a black child. The argument was it would “rob the child of his blackness”.

I wonder what became of that kid.

[livius]

Nobody cares about the children.

I remember when a family member was considering adopting a child from a Latin American country and had started working with an agency on this. Suddenly the country (leftwing, of course) decided to announce that Americans were kidnapping “their children,” who of course were all busy starving and dying in horrible state orphanages until Americans had started kidnapping them. So they shut down the adoption procedure and Americans were not allowed to adopt.

Kids? Who cares about them?

[proud American in Canada]

1. Why does the author capitalize Black but not white? This is absurd and really starting to get on my nerves.

2. So, in the name of protecting black children, we are going to deny them the chance to live in a stable, loving home?

3. And if black children are being taken out of their original homes more than white children, sorry but we really know the reason. Their dads have long since skipped town and their mothers are in jail or living in a crack den. At some point, Grandma just can’t handle it anymore.

[proud American in Canada]

Exactly. Please see my comment below, #9.

[JoJo354]

Yet they will let two gay guys or lesbians adopt children. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical because those kids aren’t gay or lesbian...at least not yet?

[Navy Patriot]

That is absolutely hilarious, Karl!

[Navy Patriot]

In the middle nineties a liberal neighbor mentioned he and his wife (both White) were considering adopting and had extended consideration to a black child.

He continued that the County Officials involved were obviously trying to steer them away from a black child.

I told him to tell the County Bureaucrats that both he and his wife would learn Ebonics, because I knew that would give him the best information available to evaluate the Bureaucrats he was dealing with.

He eventually figured it out.

[Kenny500c]

Please adopt the children if only to enhance their self respect.

[FormerFRLurker]

Has anyone looked into how many blacks want to adopt black children? Crickets.